Project 3 “Speedy Recovery” – Final

After the second rounds of feedback, I mainly worked on tweaking the graphic elements e.g. the position to keep the mechanism secure, the colour to ensure proper contrast in printing, text kerning, placement and size to ensure higher readability. For the paper stock, I went with a slightly textured, matte card as I like how the paper created a warmer and more homely feel to the design, (hopefully) making the viewer feel more at home and happy.

front

back

inside (fully extended)

outside (fully extended)

Opening mechanism:

Hope your day goes swimmingly!! // another mod down wew #viscomm #popupcard

A video posted by Amy (@mtsfie) on Nov 6, 2016 at 6:50pm PST

Project 2 “Combating Zika Outbreak” – Final

After the second round of edits, feedback was given that:

hierarchy/ negative space needed to be stronger
smaller text/ text did not have to be so huge to show emphasis
sweet spot of placement – the placement of the text was a little awkward and clunky
placement of mosquito bite – not very realistic

Feedback was also given that the image still looked too sexualised, despite the cropping.

Thus, I made some changes to the layout and central image to create the final:

The central image was changed into something more neutral, although the same treatment was applied to it.

The placement of the main slogan was changed as well, leading vertically along the neck of the female down to the mosquito bite, to create some kind of flow of reading for the eyes (instead of being a static horizontal block).

The secondary slogan and extra information were kept to the right of the poster (but not flush left) to continue on the reading flow from the mosquito bite, but still ensures that the text is easily readable.

Project 1 “Therapeutic Graphics” – Further Exploration and Final

After getting feedback from the class, I decided to do more research on the kinds of landscapes that could inspire me to create new forms of therapeutic art.

I turned to Japanese woodblock prints, both traditional (e.g. Hokusai) and modern as I felt that the clean shapes and natural forms depicted in the prints suited the style of my work.

While both styles of Japanese woodblock prints often derived inspiration and subject matter from scenes in nature, he more modern woodblock print works were even more simplistic in style than the traditional ones and often reduced the landscape into simple silhouettes.

There were also a lot of overlapping shapes and colours to create texture. Hence, emulating that, I created my piece based on the idea of depicting one of the 4 seasons, spring.

Spring – Field of Flowers

For this piece, I chose to depict spring as I wanted to explore a series based on the 4 seasons, and I felt that spring fitted the purple colour scheme the most. I played around with the various opacities and colour combinations to create variation in the work while still maintaining the clean cut shapes similar to the style of the woodblock prints.

I also explored an alternative composition (Summer) to explore the possibility of developing the format of the work into a series.

Summer – Dunes of Sand

Assignment 3 Final Project – Artist Statement Final

EXPERIENCING DAKOTA CRESCENT

Experiencing Dakota Crescent is an immersive film viewed from the Google Cardboard, a Virtual Reality (VR) viewer where users experience the film directly within an isolated head space, rather than merely viewing it passively from a flat screen.

Through the use of such a medium, Experiencing Dakota Crescent invites the audience to experience Dakota Crescent in a more direct manner – with the impending government plans for redevelopment, it might only be through such digital methods that local places with culture and heritage can be preserved.

Experiencing Dakota Crescent draws inspiration from Rachel Whiteread and 03 – FLATS in their inspection of physical space, locations and their deconstruction – the use of data moshing techniques in the work is a reflection of that; to deconstruct the documented space while constructing it in the viewer’s mind, and to question the permanence of memory after a physical place is no longer in existence.

Assignment 3 Final Project – Artist Statement draft

eXPERIENCING dAKOTA cRESCENT

Drawing inspiration from Rachel Whitehead and a film centering around the domestic experience in local public housing – 03-FLATS, Amy films the daily life in the Dakota Crescent estate from a first person’s Point of View to emulate the experience of being in the place directly. At the same time, multiple experiences and perspectives are stitched together, to reflect the multi-faceted nature of such a heritage-rich area, as well as the limitations of digital film in attempting to record and archive physical locations and experiences wholly. Through the use of video moshing techniques, Amy mashes the different experiences together, while constantly deconstructing it. The use of video moshing acknowledges the limitations of digital data in recording tangible experiences, while bringing to question the permanence of memory after a physical place is no longer in existence.

Pop Art Haniwa – Reflections

DD1004: Introduction to the Histories of Art II
Final Research and Practice Project

Title of the Work: Pop Art Haniwa

Team Member: Cheng Shao Meng (Merlin), Ong Ting Hui, Amy, Seth Devanshi

Soooo it’s already the end of the semester – it’s been a long and arduous journey but I sure learned a lot! For this project, I got to team up with my amazing team mates Devanshi and Merlin to create a visual response to an artwork or art form in China/ Japan/ India. Initially, it was hard for us to find a topic to work on – all of us did research but we didn’t find anything that resonated with us.

Then, Merlin brought up the case study of the Haniwa – being a gamer, he had quite a wide knowledge base on Japanese games and he found out that Haniwa was appropriated pretty heavily in Japanese video games. I remembered the Haniwa from lecture – I loved the cute form of it, and it was interesting to learn that it was actually adapted into cartoon characters in video games. As all of us really liked this topic, we decided on our topic pretty quickly.

Our initial idea was to adapt pop icons – we eventually picked Marilyn Monroe, but after feedback from Sujatha, we decided to revise our concept and contextualise it further to be more specific. So we picked Hello Kitty, which had better mass appeal and fits better into our concept.

Throughout the whole process of fleshing out the idea and executing it, Merlin and Devanshi were very helpful and we split the work evenly between us to do. All of us put in our own ideas and it was really fun and interesting to discuss this project with them!

All in all it was a really lighthearted and fun project and a great way to end the semester – it was hands on and great to do and we all learned many things in the process!

Postcards that we made for this project

The Haniwa Kitty stands tall

The super awesome Team Haniwa!

Assignment 3 “Zine” – Subsequent Development and Final

Zine – Concept

(cont’d from part 1) ONTO PART 2!

After developing the overall theme, I selected a few works (both personal and for school) that I felt fitted the theme better – I decided to organise the zine into 2 parts: The Heart and The Brain. The Brain contained the more whimsical, fun works while The Heart contained works that were more introspective in nature.

For the works, I selected a mix of photography, collage and illustration to create more variety in the zine.

These 2 designs were actually logos/ promotional material that I did for my friend! They didn’t get selected eventually, but I really liked them so I decided to put them into my zine.

I also added a few of my personal film photos

I also experimented with hand-binding, as I liked the handmade effect that it had which I felt gave the zine more personality. Unlike the tutorial which I used (here!), however, I used rough twine to add to the rough, handmade style that I was going for. I also switched the orientation of the booklet (inside becoming outside) as I preferred to have the last knot on the outside of the booklet – something which I found out after doing a mockup.

(From https://sewcompelled.wordpress.com/2013/03/15/saddle-stitch-bookbinding-tutorial/)

The switching of the orientation was also inspired by the group critique (thanks Heng Tong!) who suggested that I did a double cover zine to fit my zine format better.

For this project, I also experimented with paper stock – I used tracing paper for the inserts and the covers as I liked the translucency and I printed the zine on cream/off-white paper: white paper felt too clean and glaring to me and I didn’t like the sterile look it gave.

View of the 2 different paper stocks

I tried printing on 2 different off white papers and eventually chose the one that had a lesser tint in the colour and gave me the crispest lines.

For the font, I tried a variety of styles to keep the zine interesting. It was hard to pick fonts that fitted the style of the zine but yet was also able to show individual colour for each work. All in all, I used 3 different methods:

Handwritten brush typography (black/silver/gold)

Experimentation with brush font

Black print

Trying my hand at print typography

For this part of the zine, I tried to relate the words visually to the work – the increasing letter sizes of D A R K to simulate a torch shining into the darkness, and aVOID as a pun: a void, and a place that one should avoid at all costs.

Letter transfer (red)

An interesting experiment

Another technique that I tried and had fun with was letter transfer! I found these (pretty old) transfer sheets sold outside artmark so I bought some to try out. I really like the vintage style and colour, and the irregular way it transferred onto the paper added personality to it which I liked, so I added it to my compositions as well.

Trying out brush typography in metallic colours (failed version)

While doing all the experimentation for this zine, I experienced a few hiccups. One of them was the control of my hands on brush work. For my first iteration of the Sun/Moon work, I didn’t draw in guidelines (too much confidence ahhh) and so the final work ended up being misaligned so I had to redo it. It was kinda painful but at least I learned something from it!

Misaligned printing T_T

Another hiccup that I learned to resolve was on printing dimensions. When I did the printing for the mockup, the printing was somehow skewed. After a lot of fiddling around with the computer settings, I realised that it was because Adobe pdf sets the default printing size to letter (damn American dimensions). Luckily, I found out so I was able to change it for my final piece.

Final

Unfortunately I forgot to take photos of the contents but here’s a front/back shot of the final piece!

Front

Back

Reflections

All in all, it was a very satisfying and fun project and I really enjoyed it a lot! This project got my feet wet in Indesign (which I definitely have to learn to master) and I liked the experimentation with fonts that I did.

I would have loved to try more in terms of layout and cross page spreads, and perhaps more experimentation of layering and textures – perhaps a new zine created with totally new work would give me more leeway to do so.

Many thanks to the class for being super supportive and fun throughout this whole journey and Joy for being an awesome tutor ^^

Assignment 2 “Point of View” – Process and Final

POINT OF VIEW

stage – Michael Jackson – Nietzsche – urban dwellings – passenger – astronaut

Final work

Space from the point of view of a performer is a stage.

To a performer, the stage is a special and holy place kept close to the heart. To a true performer, any kind of space can be a stage for them to perform and create wonderful works. After all, isn’t all the world’s a stage?

Space from the point of view of Michael Jackson is a walk (in the park).

This is a double pun that I’m kinda proud of keke – the walk refers to the Moonwalk (hence the fedora on the moon) and it’s a walk in the park for Michael Jackson as dancing the moonwalk (and controlling the space) is so easy for him.

While doing this I learnt how fedoras are surprisingly hard to paint.

Space from the point of view of Nietzsche is The Void.

This work draws from the philosophies of Nietzsche, and his famous line, “And if you gaze long into an abyss, the abyss also gazes into you.” I wanted to try to create a visceral horror effect as the eye surfaces from the black void, hence the white lines to simulate goo.

Space from the point of view of urban dwellings is a luxury.

This was one of the compositions that I struggled with, but I eventually settled with this after the very helpful group critique! I wanted to created the feeling of cramped quarters, but also wanted to continue with my visual concept of images suspended in space (hah) so I decided to restrict the buildings to the middle. There are painted buildings camouflaged within the composition too, as physical space isn’t the only thing that is a rarity in an urban space.

Space from the point of view of a passenger is impossible!

I got inspiration from always being squashed in the mrt hhahaha. It doesn’t help that I’m short, which makes carving out my own breathing space even harder. For this piece, I decided to portray the idea of “sardines in a can” to evoke meaning of the idiom visually, instead of directly portraying people. Hopefully this makes it more interesting!

Space from the point of view of an astronaut is exploration.

This was the easiest composition for me, and the first one finalised. It’s a more literal reading of the word space, but I decided to add a traditional oil lamp instead of just showing the astronaut hanging as I wanted to give the figure a sense of purpose, and to evoke the feeling of searching in the dark.

Process/concept

Unfortunately I don’t have many photos of the process (read: almost none ;_;) as I tend to bury myself in my work when I’m working and forget about everything else…

But here are some detail shots that I have!

These were a bitch to cut out.

For all of the compositions, I incorporated some form of photographic elements but I decided to go with a physical collage rather than a digital one (like my previous project) so I could add more illustration to it.

Fishies sitting in the can.

I also wanted to use traditional collage as I wanted to create a layering effect for the images and thus make it look more real and tangible, by the different paper thickness.

This also helps my images to pop up but just a little more so they looked more three dimensional and less flat, kinda like a pop up book.

All the photos/illustrations were stuck on with blu tack as well instead of glue as I felt that glue would stick everything together too well and not let them pop up as much.

Initial composition for Nietzsche

Final composition for Nietzsche

I decided to change my composition for Nietzsche as well, substituting the drawn iris for the photo one as I wanted to maintain the consistency in using photographs in all my images, and I felt that the photo iris was more descriptive and gives a better contrast with the drawn lines in the composition.

Reflections

Personally it was very satisfying to me how this turned out; I really liked the visual direction that this project took (unlike the previous project which left me very dissatisfied) and I got to return to traditional mediums like watercolour which I liked and was more familiar with.

I also got to try out traditional collage which I must say I really enjoyed, maybe even more than digital collage (not that I still don’t love digital collage)! It was a little tedious at times, but I like the tactile nature of it and the kind of depth that it lends to my works. I will try to experiment more in that area in the future 🙂

Assignment 2 “Sound and Image” – Research and Final

Assignment 2 – Sound and Image

*UPDATED WITH SECOND SOUND STORY

Genres: Film Noir and thriller

Sound Characteristics of film noir:

Analog buzz (recording technology), filtered sound
Large spaces between action scenes: to build up tension
sudden/dramatic action
general pace – slower, not action packed
leisurely, simulating smooth jazz?
Generally dark sounding

Sound Characteristic of Thriller (zombie flick):

buildup of tension to climax
use of heartbeat/breathing sounds to create tension; tempo
possible extended action: chase scenes, fight/tussle scenes etc.

Other References: Immersive sound (in games)

First person perspective – immersive soundscape
Sounds coming from environment/ ambient sounds
Sounds coming from own body: e.g. heavy breathing
Relative proximity of sounds

Process

When I received the 10gb game audio bundle, I was intrigued by the zombie sounds samples in it so I decided to do a little zombie thriller flick – and I chose noir films to be my second genre as I found the genre interesting and unfamiliar, so I wanted to experiment with it.

Throughout the entire process, I tried to experiment with various elements to bring about the effect I wanted – for the first film, it was was to present the scene from the zombie’s perspective as he burst from his coffin and attacked a nearby house. To simulate that, I experimented with the soundscape of the scene: e.g. varying sounds across the left and right channels as the zombie turns towards the house and varying breadth of soundscape as he breaks out from the confined coffin into open air. Shit tons of audio mixing with volume and reverb was also used with the sound samples to create a believable soundscape so that it would be immersive for the listener.

For the second film, I wanted to try and produce an emotional soundscape with the soundtracks used; to evoke certain emotions in the listener such that they might understand the emotions of the protagonist. Thus, I used two different soundtracks to create the shift in emotion and mood. I also wanted to evoke the style and era of noir films, so I used a lot of effects like reverb (again), chorus, analog delay, distortion as well as layering analog sound samples to create the vintage record effect reminiscent of films and music from that era.

For both sound stories, lots of layering of different samples of the same sound was also done to produce a fuller overall sound.

The main challenges I faced was in manipulating the samples that I had to create the atmosphere that I wanted – some of the sound samples sounded way too close/isolated so I often had to find other viable samples/layer many many sounds together/edit the sounds heavily to create the effect I want.

Also, I found many of the sound samples limited – to my amateur ears, many of them did not really sound like the sound effect they were supposed to emulate. Hence, I had to become more creative here, using different sound samples not from the described scene and using lots of post production to produce the final sound that I was looking for.

All in all, it was a challenging project but I enjoyed the process and learnt a lot from it.

Sound story 1:

Zombie awakens in a coffin in the middle of the night, breaks through. He slowly shuffles along the road till he reaches the first inhabited house, and thumps on the door. A lady answers the door only to get munched on.

Total number of audio tracks: 12

Sound samples used in order of appearance (repeated samples not mentioned):

Analog buzz

Dog growl (3 samples)

Cellophane crumbling

Splitting wood (2 samples)

Animal digging dirt

Dry growl

Dog fight

Slice/crunch

Raging female creature

Ice sheet crunch

Leek crunch

Country night ambience

Rock/ debris falling (2 samples)

Walking on gravel

House/ kitchen ambience (2 samples)

Wind chimes/ wind ambience

Door opening

Female “huh” intonation

Psycho scream

Cutting watermelon

Sound story 2:

A man walks home to his apartment in the rain. He puts down his bag and keys, and prepares a drink. Putting on the record player, he laughs without humour and starts sobbing. In his moody state, he flings his glass against the wall where it breaks.

Total number of audio tracks: 7

Sound samples used in order of appearance (repeated samples not mentioned):

Analog buzz

Rain/ thunderstorm ambience

Jazz music soundtrack

Footsteps in puddles

Footsteps on concrete (2 samples)

Door unlocking

Door opening/ closing

Putting down leather bag

Putting down backpack

Putting down keys

Arranging glasses

Handling of wine glass

Ice cubes in glass

Pouring drink

Starting of record player

Analog vinyl recorded noise

Edith Piaf’s Je Ne Regrette Rien

Crying man

Laughing man

Breaking glass

Assignment 1 “Typography Portrait Problem” – Final

Final composition